Informal, Unofficial BBC Board Minutes

Lately board meetings have been about every other month at a downtown eatery.Meetings are announced via the club calendar.  Crazy Horse has worked out well, and we gathered in the back room at 6 PM on Monday, June 30. Some folks ordered beer or soda or water and several ordered supper. 

Present were the elected officers Jim Schroeder (pres), Warren Smith (VP), Kathy Cummins  (sec), Jerry Arveson (treasurer), and Stan Ellis (at large), Committee chairs present included Tammy Berger (membership), John Bassett (ride coordinator), John Connell (RAIN), Allan Edmonds (media), and Yusuf (marketing). Absent were chairs Dan Hickey (mountain biking), Brett Nelson (grants), and Andrew Dingman (safety and education). Andrew is the newest board member.

Several minor corrections to the April minutes were made.

Advocacy Chair Ron Brown made a report in an area that has become more and more significant to the club. He briefly discussed ongoing issues of a bike bridge over the new I-69. Ron also reported on his dangerous drain covers project. Major progress has been made over the last few years, thanks to support from the city. He has updated his map of dangerous grates on the BBC web site. Issues of mixed use trails continue to be prominent. He got quick action on an upside down grate that caused a flat (fortunately nothing more) to a club member.

Our new marketing chair Yusuf reported on two new items. First the idea to have a BBC slogan. He has tabulated the top votes. Some good ideas were never entered: Bike and Community; Breakaway with the BBC. The board didn’t choose one. But we did award prizes to the two leaders “Because Biking’s Cool” (Jerry Arveson) and “”Today is a good day to ride” (Mark Naper). The winners will receive their choice of existing merchandise inventory. Maybe we’ll have 2 or 3 slogans available for different uses. Second is the question of sponsoring a men’s and women’s Little 5 team. Base amount is $3000 for a dual sponsorship. There was some discussion of pros and cons of such a sponsorship. The idea would be for increased exposure, with our name in the program. There would not be much interaction with the sponsored teams. We wondered whether any other non-profits do this? None that we know. Maybe we could purchase an ad for much less. E.g. $400 for a full page ad. But would we get more exposure with a sponsorship? We can wait to make a decision until late winter.

John Bassett reported that club rides have all had leaders. We have successful family rides, relax rides (a few participants), and beginner rides. We had a Saturday  ride this spring with 50. They’ve run from 8 to 50. Waivers have been working okay, using it to encourage people to join up.

John Connell reported on RAIN. Things are going well, with committee naturally a little nervous as the event approaches. They are planning a slightly different finish line at what is a car exit. This is in part due to Earlham installing geothermal in the bigger field east of the old entrance path. Still hoping to have a masseuse. Definitely will have a couple of bike mechanics, which was a popular option last year. So far we have 1050 registered. Might hit 1200, a bit less than last year. There are increasing options for competing rides, e.g. iron man, indy crit, etc. Tammy has been doing a great job with merchandise. Still need just a few more volunteers. They still expect some extra volunteers at the finish line, by people who are just there. PRAIN going this coming Saturday for volunteers who want to ride the route. We will go with Ron’s electronic finish line program, without the manual  backup operation.

Membership is more or less normal now that the renewal deadline has passed. Has cleared out all but a couple of women’s jerseys. Tammy has Rain merchandise in her house.

We awarded a $1500 grant to the Bicycle and Pedestrian Commission that will help fund bicycle instructor training.

In general chairs are welcome to run with their ideas, with broad oversight by the board.

Jerry Arveson made his regular treasurer’s report. We continue to be in good shape financially. We’re somewhat behind on RAIN registrations 9-10% compared to last year. Jersey orders are down proportionally. Dues are up 4% (at same annual charge).

Other announcements:

Summer picnic is set for August 24 in Upper Cascades.

 We will contribute $500 to co-sponsor a special speaker for a city program this fall on the topic of reducing traffic. 

RAAM was a great local success this year, with one complaint about inappropriate rider behavior near Bloomfield.

There being no further new business, the meeting adjourned about 7:30.

Flat Flat Flat Flat Flat

By Allan Edmonds

A group of us "moderate" riders did the Middle Century out of French Lick on Saturday while the Double Century crowd was doing its thing along much of the same route as laid out by Jim Schroeder. Altogether there were around 20 riders more or less evenly split between Doubles and Singles (and two who started with the Doubles and finished the singles route for a total of 150 miles). The Doubles had 3 or 4 support vehicles. The Singles were mostly on our own.

Double Century Route

Middle Century Route

A few of the Singles were up for riding a good part of the way with the Doubles providing some welcome drafts, I'm sure. My own group, however, took off shortly before the Doubles arrived at French Lick at their mile 50. We stayed ahead for awhile. But we got passed when one of our group had a flat.

CE expertly swapped in his spare tube in a short 10 minutes and we were on our way again. The repair included a stick-on boot provided by Craig over the tiny hole in the tire.

Before long Robin picked up a roofing nail that went through the tire and penetrated the rim! CE reported that he was riding next to Robin and heard a "tap-tap-tap", which made him worry that something was mechanically wrong with his own bike.

At least it was a pleasant grassy area for working on repairing the tire. Cost us 14 minutes.

As a result we were only slightly late getting into the first scheduled rest stop.

Before long CE had his second flat. He swapped in a borrowed tube while carefully checking tire and rim for defects. None found. It seemed to be independent of his first flat. This one took 13 minutes.

The result was that we rolled into the planned lunch stop at the Subway in just before the main Double Century group was getting ready to depart, with our having had 37 minutes of down time.

Someone said that Doug was offering a spare tire to anyone who needed it at the Subway, but no one took him up on it.

Shortly after leaving the lunch stop. CE had another flat! This was really frustrating. He patched the tube this time. Still we couldn't find any problem and it seemed independent of the other punctures. When we pumped it up it seemed to be losing air. So we backed off and looked for a problem. None found. Apparently it was just leaking air through the valve stem since we left the pump attached. So in the end this flat was changed twice. This one took 30 minutes and CE for one was feeling a bit grumpy. But we mostly stayed relaxed, knowing we had all day.

By and by around mile 60 CE had his 4th flat. At that point he told us to go on and to come back and pick him up after we finished. He gave his car keys to Gail, and we went ahead while he walked about a mile to the nearest small town. About this time Steve connected with us having left the Double group with his plan not to over tax his knee and limit his ride to 150 miles.

Soon Rachel had the idea of asking Sid and Jack who were at Sid's new B&B in West Baden Springs and not riding to pick up CE, which they kindly did! That saved us from an extra couple of hours of driving after the ride, which was important when we were already running so late.

The rest of the ride was mostly uneventful. One wrong turn in Jasper that added a mile or two. Fun frozen yogurt treats at the IGA. Not too much trouble on the gravel.

All but CE finished our Middle Century doing well. It was a great day in southern Indiana and even CE, despite the difficulties with his tire, later reported "I really did have a fun ride yesterday. "

Thanks to Jim Schroeder for designing and promoting the ride and including a way for a group like ours to conveniently do a "short" option.

Joe's Bald Spot

A couple years ago I put new Continental Gatorskin tires on my road bike, like many of my riding buddies have done. They've last pretty well. One of my previous pair died an early death with some sidewall damage. But I kept the remaining one as a spare (a front tire), although I never had to use it.

Last year sometime on a club ride we were coming back from a ride southwest of town when a mail delivery car stopped in front of me and I locked up my rear brake, skidding a little before coming to a stop. All seemed well. But Joe Anderson, who was ahead on the ride, commented afterwards that that tire would wear out sooner.

That was in the back of my mind last week. I don't really keep track of how many miles are on my tires or other equipment or when I last changed or serviced them. So I thought maybe I should examine my tires more closely than usual.

Here's what I found on my rear tire:

Joe's bald spot! He was totally right. I felt lucky that I hadn't already had a blow-out. Fortunately I had that old spare, which I immediately swapped in before going out that evening. I had already been thinking that I should probably put on new tires before RAIN. Now I know I will.

Popcorn Ride

While some folks were doing the club drive-and-ride from Spring Mill State Park to the Ohio River, others of us with various time constraints opted to do a shorter local ride, club favorite Popcorn Ride (PDF), said to be named the 65th best adventure ride by National Geographic Adventure  in April 2000. We're not sure who nominated the ride, and Indiana has no listed top adventures in the current list.

We had a very congenial group of 20 riders and a beautiful Saturday morning for riding. We mostly followed the club map and cue sheet, with a few exceptions. We took the B-Line trail from Grimes to Tapp rather than Rogers. And as we completed the Popcorn Loop folks opted to stay on Popcorn back to Rockport, rather than take Spencer Pike and Wells Lane, which bends toward Springville and makes for more retracing one route in the homeward direction along Rockport. Maybe we should just give in and change the map to show this.

Note that Ron Brown has been updating maps and cue sheets to show some current club preferences. In particular this ride now finishes via Church Lane, Walnut Street Pike, through Cardinal Glen. Also, the map shows the preferred back road way out of Springville to Highway 54, on Bedford Street now that it is nicely paved. This blown-up bit of map shows us backtracking from the Convenience Store to Bedford Street.

We had a couple of new riders. We lost one rider to a missing cleat screw early (at least he was intending to go short) and another who had a flat coming out of Springville and sent the rest of the group on. A collision involving three bikes on Rogers Road on the way out town was fortunately minor, with no apparent injury or damage.

We had several pleasant stops, including Harrodsburg, Springville, Popcorn Church, and Tramway. There was so much fun conversation it was sometimes hard to get everybody going again. Here's Klaus's picture of the group at the Popcorn Church:

You can tell just by looking that it was a fantastic day. It worked out great that we offered an alternative local ride.